binary

Meanings

Adjective

• Being in one of two mutually exclusive state; such as on or off, true or false, molten or frozen, or presence or absence.
• Concerning logic whose subject matter concerns binary states.
• Concerning numbers and calculations using the binary number system.
• Having two equally important parts; related to something with two parts.
• Of an operation, function, procedure or logic gate, taking exactly two operands, arguments, parameters or inputs; having domain of dimension 2.
• Of data, consisting coded values (e.g. machine code) not interpretable as plain or ASCII text (e.g. source code).
• Focusing on two mutually exclusive conditions.

Noun

• A thing which can have only (one or the other of) two values.
• The bijective base-2 numeral system, which uses only the digits 0 and 1.
• A file consisting of data other than human-readable text.
• A satellite system consisting of two stars or other bodies orbiting each other.

Related

Similar words

• dyadic
• Boolean
• base-2
• base 2
• binary star, double star

Opposite words

• non-binary
• ASCII, text

Origin

• From Late Latin bīnārius ("consisting of two"), from Latin bīnī ("two-by-two, pair").